In this post, Callum Paterson, the Design Lead on the Student Voice Project in Registry Services, presents a reflective round-up of the 16 blog posts from the ‘Student Voice in Practice’ series (May-June 2025), and offers five thing he took away from the series. Callum was previously part of the Student Voice team at Edinburgh University Students’ Association.
1. Goodbye to what has been
This is something that I think we all instinctively know, or have come to learn: what worked before the pandemic just doesn’t work now. Our student body has changed, and we have an ever more diverse cohort with different experiences and motivations for coming to study at the University of Edinburgh. This applies to everything we do, but it has a particular relevance for student voice as students increasingly question the value of Higher Education. This presents challenges for us when it comes to engaging students in feedback mechanisms – and, often, engaging them in their studies – because why give feedback if you view your degree as a product in which you have no stake in its future?
Let’s take a basic, academic approach to this. As Femke and Magdalena remark in their blog post, if a procedure in your own research wasn’t working, you would probably think about changing it. One of the first blog posts in this series highlighted the journey that the Vet School has gone on since 2020 after realising their way of doing things wasn’t working. Now, they have a thriving Staff-Student Liaison Committee (SSLC) system which is not just well-attended, but has purpose through the creation and presentation of actions to the Head of School.
Now, more than ever, we all need to approach student voice with an open mind and be open to change.
2. Variety is the spice of life
The entire ‘Student Voice in Practice’ series has demonstrated the impact of having different ways for students to engage and provide their feedback, thoughts, and opinions. Emma highlighted the success of Edinburgh Futures Institute’s (EFI) ‘Feedback Fest’, complete with temporary tattoos, freebies, and a themed playlist. I think part of what made this so successful was the fact it didn’t take itself too seriously – framing their Director as the festival headliner was a stroke of genius. And yet it provided the opportunity for students to give meaningful feedback with prompts ranging from ‘Most EFI moment’ to ‘Best Course Organiser’. Melanie and Lizzie, in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC), also played into this variety with their Therapets and Alpaca Pals events. They commented on the idea of students “talking with their feet”; this is Student Voice in action, and they didn’t need a traditional survey to tell them what students wanted.
3. We need to stop siloing student voice
This point goes hand in hand with creating variety. Too often we see Student Voice as ‘added value’, and also assume that someone else has responsibility for it. We all have a shared responsibility to create opportunities for students to feed back, and create the conditions where they can be open, honest, and constructive. This series highlighted multiple examples where student voice activity took a village to raise: from the Feedback Fest in EFI needing support from the student experience team right up to senior leadership; Edinburgh College of Art’s (ECA) interest groups relying on the time, effort and good will from their School Rep, Emily, other student reps and members of staff; or School of Social and Political Science, which took the drive and interest of their School Rep, James, and combined this with the facilitative role of staff. We need to move beyond this idea that Student Voice is just a single team or sole person’s responsibility, because it sits with all of us.
4. Pizza = Participation (or does it?)
“Student engagement specialists hate this one trick”
Pre-pandemic, pizza was the answer to all of our student engagement woes. Well, that’s how many people across the sector felt, anyway. Now, not so much. As Melanie and Lizzie (in my view, correctly) suggest in their blog post, if students can easily recreate an activity at home, why would they bother engaging with it? (The same principle applies to learning and teaching, by the way. But let’s not go there right now).
There are so many examples in this series about how to build value for students engaging in Student Voice activity. Note that I don’t use the word ‘incentivise’ here, because that’s not what this is about. We shouldn’t have to incentivise our students to have a voice and use it, nor should we have to incentivise staff to listen and act.
So, first, free food. From the Vet School providing food to those who pre-booked to attend their SSLC, to LLC’s breakfast club, to refreshments provided at ECA’s rep welcome party or EFI’s Feedback Fest – all of this adds value, and creates the right vibe. It shows students that this isn’t a box-ticking exercise. Especially in the current financial climate, spending some cash goes a long way to showing our students that hearing them is actually a priority, and not just something we pay lip service to.
But there are plenty of examples going beyond free food: Free hoodies for completing the PTES survey; vouchers for participating (especially good for online distance learners who miss out on the free food); and just the simple opportunity to develop students’ skills and knowledge of this massive place where they spend four or more formative years of their lives. These are all great examples of how you can build value for students into what you do. One final, striking example was the Vet School’s quid pro quo with the Dick Vet Student Union who asked for a donation in order to secure their Graduation Ball venue. The School’s response: “we’ll give you it in return for a 95% NSS response rate”. They managed 98%.
5. Nobody’s perfect
Shelley put this so perfectly in her blog post: “We’re not aiming for perfection; we’re aiming for connection.”
I couldn’t agree more with this, and I felt this sentiment throughout multiple posts in this series. Mary talked about this in her post on inducting programme representatives, noting that there’s always room for improvement. Emily and Anne talked about how they may change the composition of the interest groups in ECA next year to respond to demand and membership. The Vet School’s first SSLC was a self-described “disaster”, but they kept going and look where they are now. It is important to draw out the resilience shown through these examples, and the willingness to try things and adapt. It’s hard when things don’t work, but that doesn’t mean we throw in the towel.
We need to remember that, quite literally, no one, anywhere, is getting Student Voice perfect. And they probably never will. Our student community will always be changing, influenced by internal and external factors – many of which we can control, but many of which we cannot. But what we know is that there are some simple and effective things we can do right now to build trust with our students and to make sure they know how to tell us what they think, know that we value what they tell us, and know we will do something with it.
In Marianne’s final post, which looks back on the series, she made a point that reflects my own experiences during my time as a student here, in my role at EUSA, and now leading on the Student Voice Project: students and staff really, genuinely care. We should not lose sight of this; we just need to keep connecting, even if it’s not perfect.
Callum Paterson
Callum Paterson is the Design Lead on the Student Voice Project within Registry Services, having previously been part of the Student Voice team at Edinburgh University Students’ Association.
